The Start

Hey there reader! Nice to have you landed on the blog ;) This is the start of our journey, so what better way is there to start than with the right gear?

Greatness

The strive of mankind, haunts the weak and is pride of the strong. But what really does it take to be Great At Something? Is it all divine-given, natural talent and individual predisposition or is there something we can do about it? What makes somebody Great? I have decided to address these questions by analyzing the works of a man that has accomplished much during his life. And I can confidently say he is widely considered as being Great at what he did.

The Great Isaac Newton

Biography facts are for the weak, if you’re expecting them go elsewhere weirdo.

Jk, let’s have a little dive into his life first shall we?
Great Accomplishments of Isaac Newton:

• Discoveries in optics: Light composition
• Discoveries in maths: Calculus
• Discoveries in classical mechanics: Law of Universal Gravitation

And a lot more. He is described by many as the greatest mind of the millennia. And for fair reasons one might say. Regarding optics he used a prism to see the subdivisions of a white light ray refracted into the 7 rainbow colors. In maths he came to the conclusion that two really distant concepts, the ones of derivation and integration, where in fact one the opposite of the other. In classical mechanics he demonstrated that $F = G\frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}$ is the force of attraction that two celestial bodies, each of incredible mass (respectively $m_1$ and $m_2$), apply reciprocally to each other; And that it is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two bodies (respectively $r^2$) multiplied by a factor $G$ (gravitational constant), meaning it decreases when considering a greater distance $r$.
Clearly quite a bit of meat on the grill right? But was it really all his credit? Did he discover these things all by himself? How can I even think of myself as being capable of such Greatness when I can’t even get disequations right or fail at most of the stuff I try to do? Was Isaac Newton really the greatest mind of all?

Madness

The dark side of the moon.
The other side of the tossed coin.
The obstacle to Greatness.

Or… is it?

Newton’s Character

From our memories we often like to remember only the good stuff. But what does really lie in the dark? Common sense acts similarly, the idea we get of people like Newton is for them as being the best functionings individuals Mother Nature could produce, but reality is different.
Let’s get straight to the point: Isaac Newton had some screws loose too.
By diving deeper into our analysis, and so directing our attention to what lied behind this great myth, we find that Isaac Newton had quite a few problems in his life too, I’ll leave a few right here so you can have an idea of what I am talking about:

• Poisoned himself with heavy metals
• Mental illness
• Delusions of grandeur (Believed God left a hidden message in the bible for him to find with maths and predicted the world will not end before 2060)
• At 51 years old he had an 18 months long mental breakdown
• Troublesome personality leading to academical disputes with other scientists
• Egomaniac (Because of recieved criticism on his work he decided, since he was in a position to do so, to progressively exclude Robert Hooke from scientific community. Don’t worry he was also just one of the greatest scientists of his time.)
• Never married and rarely had any close friendships or friendships at all…

Well that clearly is a lot, and you can see for yourself: There is more! To be clear, I have reported a lot of mad traits not to diminish in any way the Greatness of his work, yet, but to shed a light on the mess in his life, he had it as we all do and still managed to make something out of it.
So was it really all is credit?

TLDR

no.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Wikipedia says: The phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” is a metaphor which means “using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress”.
In a letter to his rival Robert Hooke written in 5 February 1675 and published in 1855, Isaac Newton wrote:

What Des-Cartes [sic] did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

It is clear once we take into consideration the scientific discoveries of his era, that he couldn’t have done anything of what he had done if he was alone. He studied a lot and improved the work of his past and contemporary colleagues to reach greater heights.

• Optics: his experiment on light composition was actually already done by past scientists. The first, René Descartes, separated light into red and blue by observing its refraction at a small distance from the used prism. The second, Robert Hooke, found 2 more: yellow and green, by observing it at almost a meter of distance from the prism. Newton observed light at a greater distance, thus revealing the variety of color that we know now, he also went a bit further by saying that light varies with a gradient (shifting smoothly from onw color to another like RGB) and is composed by tiny particles of which the different form generates a respective color (This idea was proven wrong, light as of now is defined as being electromagnetic radiation which our eyes can percieve. Instead of tiny particles’ forms we now know that are the different wavelenghts of light that form one color or another).
• Mathematics: During his time there was also another brilliant scientist named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who is credited along with Newton as being the creator of modern calculus. He defined the mathematical function as we know it now. And he also invented some important mathematical stuff which is not known to the broad public and more reserved to academical students or enthusiasts.
• Physics: Around 1600, the scientific method began to take root. René Descartes started it with a fundamental view, developing ideas of matter and action independent of theology. Galileo Galilei wrote about experimental measurements of falling and rolling objects. Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion summarized Tycho Brahe’s astronomical observations. Leading up to our dear friend. Around year 1666 Isaac Newton developed the idea that Kepler’s laws must also apply to the orbit of the Moon around the Earth and then to all objects on Earth. In 1697 Newton published Principia which combined his laws of motion with new mathematical analysis to explain Kepler’s empirical results.
  Newton’s original formula was $F \propto \frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}$ missing $G$ as the multiplying constant factor. Although Newton subsequently estimated $G$ with great precision, the one who measured it with incredible accuracy was Cavendish, estimating $G = 6.74 * 10^{-11} \frac{m^3}{kg s^2}$ being just 1% greater than what we use now (Trust me, it’s hard to get these things right. He was great too.).

Wrapping up

We have reached the end of our journey, I have without doubt simplified a lot of the things I wrote about. It is clear in the end that Great Work comes from a lot of effort, for each of the mentioned Great Scientists in this article I can confidently say there are dozens of others, in every discipline or subject, of which the work is often not given the right credit or given too much. There are for sure stunning talents out there, people who can do incredible things and accomplish enormous goals; But it comes more and more clear that we all are capable of reaching the goals we set four ourselves. It takes time, effort and dedication. And something even more important is recognizing when we are not competent in something. It’s about competence, experience and constant exposure to new problems to solve, the rest is insecurity. So my final message with this article, is for you to take that step into the unknown. Do something which excites you, set an ambitious goal, use your time to improve yourself or simply give it all you’ve got. You can be happy of small victories and cherish for them. You can do it! Whatever it is that you are going through right now. You can, and I believe in you.

Farewell reader, as I said earlier we have reached the end of our journey… or is it just the start?